I don't know how it's possible for a year to feel like 6 months, but that's what happened to 2025. I know it's a cliché, and everyone says this, but life is getting busier and busier on all fronts. I had to scale some things back.

But one thing I didn't want to scale back was songwriting and music production. A new series(?) of 12 Song Challenge started in April, so as I write this I've just finished month 9 of 12. I've been involved in some other projects on top of that, and I've also been trying to finish my ever-elusive first album, which I'm now expecting to release in February/March 2026.

Here's a rundown of my year in songs. Some of them are finished songs and some are just ideas that need to be taken forward. A few of them are final versions and fully produced, but most are very basic recordings. I hope you enjoy listening!

January to March: finishing things

We'd just finished a challenge in December 2024, and there were a few songs that I'd started that needed wrapping up. I wanted to use these few months to finish the ideas that I felt had legs. I finished 11 out of the 12 songs I started, and published a few of them with CCLI. However, only a handful were given the full production treatment, so at some point I'll come back and do final recordings of the rest.

Here's a playlist of all my songs from the 2024 challenge, in their mixed states of completion.

April: Generosity Songs

The 2025/26 12 Song Challenge kicked off this month, and the theme for the month was "generosity songs". My submission was "Every Good and Perfect Gift", which is a few tweaks and a recording away from being finished.

May: Songs of the Bible

For this month, we were given the task of taking an existing song from the Bible (excluding the Psalms) and turning it into a song of our own. I chose Mary's song from Luke 1, also known as the magnificat, and to reflect the mystery of God living in us the song has a repeated key change and is in 7/8 time. I've got a whole arrangement in my head for this song that I'd love to make a reality.

June: There Is A Place

The 12 Song Challenge took a back seat for me this month, as my Grandma passed away and we held her funeral. I wrote a song specifically for the occasion, and performed it at the funeral with my mum and sister - it was a very special moment. The song is called "There Is A Place", and although I wrote it for this time I also tried to write it so that it could be used in a congregational context.

12 Song's theme for the month was community songs, and the best I could manage was a chorus of a song that may get picked up again in the future.

July: You've Drawn Me Close

In July of the 2025/26 12 Song Challenge we were given the task of writing "sequel songs", i.e. a song that follows on from another. The purpose of this song is to be a kind of sequel from the well-known Vineyard song from the 90s, "Draw me close to you", which has a beautiful melody but I always felt as it it could give the wrong impression of our security in God and our free access to His presence. In my "sequel song", we thank God for our closeness to him and that we don't need to and cannot earn intimacy with him.

August: Songs of Adoration

This month, we were given the challenge of writing songs of adoration. I'd started writing this song many years ago, but never finished it. This is my song of adoration, but it's particularly about how he adores us. He is our perfect Father who loves us as his adopted sons and daughters. I had the image of him singing a melody over me, like a parent would to a young child, and that's what became the foundation of this song.

September: Fruit of the Spirit

September's challenge was to write a song on one of the nine fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I chose gentleness, because that seemed like the most difficult one and I couldn't think of any other song that tackled the theme!

October: Boundless Songs

"Boundless songs" means songs that go beyond what we normally sing about on a Sunday, those aspects of life that are rarely represented in our worship. I was trying to think about something that everyone experiences, and the concept of routine came to mind - we all have one! I find it can be easy to see daily life as a grind or even insignificant, but the truth is that God has purpose for us in everything.

November: December Songs & more

Yes, November's challenge was to write songs for December. The thinking behind this was that worship leaders (who many of us who do 12 Song are) are very busy in December preparing for advent and carol services, and to have a song ready for this time requires writing it in advance! I took this opportunity to start writing a song with a good friend of mine, Nathan Caughey, who is outstanding at writing poetry. My collaboration with him resulted in this song, which we performed at the Redeemer Church carol service in December

Also in November, I produced a song of another good friend of mine, David Brackenbury. It's a beautiful and challenging song in equal measure, and it was a pleasure to work on this project together.

December: John's Gospel Songs

Most of December was in fact preoccupied with the carol service and finishing the song I'd started in November, so I had only a small window of opportunity to write something. Our task for this month was to read the gospel of John, then to write a song based on something that stood out to us. For me, the passages that stood out were where Jesus talked about being the bread and water of life in chapters 6 and 7, so I wrote "I Come to You".

Looking to 2026

12 Song Challenge runs for three more months, i.e. until the end of March. During that time I'll also finish my album, which I've been working on in various forms for the last 5 years! Glory was the first song ever uploaded to Unified Praise, my very first released song, and will be the title of my upcoming album. If you've been following my releases over the last few years you'll recognise a handful of the songs on the album, but there will be plenty of new ones on there. I'll send out another message when the album gets released.

Thanks for reading and listening, and thanks for all your support.

Happy new year!